SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Iraq on Wednesday condemned “unilateral military actions” in Sinjar district, after Turkey’s airstrikes on the town.
A Turkish drone bombed a makeshift clinic in the village Sekaina in Sinjar on Tuesday, killing eight people including for fighters of the Sinjar Resistance Units.
Three others were employees at the clinic while the other was a doctor from Kurdish areas in northeast of Turkey who went to Sinjar in 2014 to cure wounded Yazidis, the district’s self-administration council said in a statement.
Four other employees of the clinic were also wounded, it added.
Iraq’s National Security Council held a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi to discuss the situation in Sinjar, the premier office said in a statement.
The council condemned “unilateral military actions, which harm the principles of good neighborliness,” the statement read.
The security council, however, did not make any specific mention of Turkey, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) or any attacks on the country.
But it rejected “the use of Iraqi land for settling scores”, according to the statement.
Sinjar’s deputy mayor Jalal Khalef told AFP that the air raid “totally destroyed” the clinic in Sinjar, a region Ankara regularly targets in operations against the Kurdish fighters affiliated to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
The raid consisted of three drone strikes, a local official told AFP on Tuesday.
The strikes came one day after a Turkish drone bombed a vehicle in Sinjar, killing three Yazidi fighters including a local chief of the Popular Mobilization forces.
Among the wounded was another PKK official, a member of the Yazidi minority, according to AFP.
He was transferred for treatment to the Sekaina facility that was hit Tuesday, according to a Yazidi activist contacted by AFP. The PKK official had survived.
Images shared online by purported residents showed a basement and clinic reduced to rubble and black smoke rising into the air.
Turkish forces routinely conduct operations against PKK bases in rugged mountains in the Kurdistan Region.
On Friday, a Turkish airstrike killed a 50-year-old man in Disheshe village in Kani Mase sub-district, northeast of Duhok.
Turkish troops have maintained a network of bases in Iraq since the mid-1990s under security agreements struck with Saddam Hussein’s regime.
The Turkish offensive in the Kurdistan Region – particularly aerial bombing – has prompted hundreds of villagers to flee their homes.
